Legislature passes state budget after 75-hour special session

Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt lets Rep. Bob Dettmer of Forest Lake know his feelings about a bill during a special legislative session Thurday, May 25, 2017. Don Davis / Forum News Service

Pastor Mike Smith said he’d been asked to make one request among all others as he led the Minnesota Senate in an opening prayer Thursday afternoon: “That we end today.”

Smith’s prayer came as lawmakers began their third day of work in a special legislative session that was only supposed to last one. The long day finally ended at 3 a.m. when lawmakers passed the final of six major bills to fund the state’s budget over the next two years.

It was a rough road to the early morning finish, including a stare-down over an infrastructure bill shortly before midnight, and a 1 a.m. phone call with Gov. Mark Dayton to break a logjam over the health and human services budget plan.

PRIDE VS. CONCERN

“There’s no question that it was a grind,” said House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown. “We’re just happy to be able to get it all done. I think this is a budget that Minnesotans can be proud of.”

Democratic leaders were less proud. House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said “Minnesota’s working families got left behind” by the budgets Republicans negotiated with Dayton, a Democrat. Bakk graded the session as a “D” and said he ask Dayton to veto the $650 million tax cut bill that Republicans trumpet as a top achievement.

“I am very, very concerned about the fiscal stability of the state,” Bakk said.

Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, said he’s confident Dayton will sign the budget measures into law instead of vetoing them and causing another special session.

“I believe the governor will sign them, because we worked with him all the way through,” Gazelka said.

DAYTON’S CHOICE: SIGN OR VETO

Five major budget bills and a package of infrastructure spending are headed to Gov. Mark Dayton. They’ll join five other bills that lawmakers passed on time before the regular legislative session ended at midnight on Monday to form a $46 billion budget that Dayton can sign into law — or veto.

Dayton negotiated each budget measure with lawmakers, but says he will carefully study each bill before making a final decision about whether to sign it. He’ll have three days to make a decision on some of the budget bills, and 14 to decide on the bills approved Friday.

If Dayton signs all the budget bills, they will set the state’s budget for the next two years. If he vetoes one or more, then lawmakers may need to come back in a special session to keep parts of the state budget operating after July 1.

FINAL ACTION

The $14 billion health and human services budget is the second-largest and most controversial part of the state’s $46 billion budget. Daudt said Wednesday that it took staff 22 hours just to draft the bill, and it took more work to prepare the final version for floor debate.

“HHS was the beast,” Gazelka said, using an acronym for health and human services. “So big, so difficult.”

Republicans pushed hard for cuts in the $14 billion part of the budget, but in a compromise with Dayton, many of the “savings” actually represent shifting money into an outside fund.

The state government funding bill is one of the least costly and shortest of the budget measures — but it was one of the last to come together. The Republican-controlled Legislature wanted to cut funding to agencies, demand efficiencies and repeal a long-standing campaign subsidy in Minnesota. In the end, a slimmed-down measure funded agencies and kept Minnesota’s campaign funding system intact. In the final hours, because of a quirk of Senate power, a change to the measure also kept the Minnesota state employee contract approval system the same, despite Republican desires to change it. The measure passed both chambers of the Legislature with significant Democratic support.

Minnesota state Rep. Jason Metsa of Virginia carries his almost-15-week-old son, Josiah, on the House floor Thursday, May 25, 2017. Metsa has tried to spend some time each week at home with his wife and son, but the Legislature got busy and he had ot been there for a couple of weeks. (Don Davis / Forum News Service)

Had lawmakers not finished Friday morning, they were considering adjourning until after the Memorial Day weekend.